


The Girl Next Door

by skye_42



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Copious use of sex toys, Crack, F/F, F/M, Gen, I’m speedrunning through every trope I can find, Modern AU, NSFW, seriously this is a lethal amount of crack, the 2020 take on a flower shop/tattoo parlor au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:34:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27790831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_42/pseuds/skye_42
Summary: What’s up kids welcome to the sex shop/landscaping company au literally nobody asked for.
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar, Taryn Duarte/Nicasia, The Bomb/The Roach (The Folk of the Air), Vivienne Duarte/Heather
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	The Girl Next Door

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr snusbandxknifewife if you wanna read the fic with my rambling. Also literally with this fic I figured out how to include italics so yeehaw.

_Dun dun_

Jude looks up as the front door of her father’s business, Lawn & Order, opens. The bell, added by her eldest sister in an effort to annoy their father, has been going off all day. Work is piling up on the receptionist desk and she curses to herself, knowing that more paperwork means less time outside. 

A USPS delivery man walks in, hauling a hand truck nearly overflowing with boxes. Sweat drips down his face, pooling at his collar as Jude decides that maybe a little time in the AC isn’t too bad on a day as hot as this one. 

“Sign here,” the obviously exhausted man says as he turns a clipboard towards her. 

_Funny, Madoc didn’t tell her they’d be getting a delivery today._

Still, she shrugs and absentmindedly signs the clipboard as the man unloads the hand truck with a dramatic groan. She should get up and help him, and, on any other day, she probably would. But today is for licking wounds and pouting. 

The clock ticks quietly as Jude considers how she has to file papers and phone customers and clean the shop, just to go home for family dinner where her sister will undoubtedly be moaning about her cheating ass of an ex. 

_ Not sure why she’s surprised, considering he cheated on JUDE with HER. _

Taryn and Locke had been a thing officially for only three months, but they’d been sleeping together behind Jude’s back for much longer than that. The very idea makes her skin crawl and she would much rather spend her valuable time cutting someone’s lawn with nail clippers instead of playing nice with her poor heartbroken witch of a twin. 

“Have a good one!” Jude clocks back into reality as the USPS man walks out the door, taking his hand truck with him and leaving her to the quiet of the AC unit and the court room tv playing in the corner. 

Sighing, she gets up from her leather stool and walks around the counter to pick up the boxes. They look innocent enough, simple white USPS priority mail boxes that she expects to contain samples of seeds or maybe replacement weed whacking string trimmers. She could use some of those, the weed whacker she takes in her truck hasn’t been working as well as usual and Mrs. Mitsgunmins is kind of an asshole about precision. 

She lets out a groan as she picks up the top two. The boxes are a lot heavier than she thought they’d be. Puzzled, she sets the two boxes on the counter, leaving behind the other two as she goes on a hunt for some scissors. Making it almost to her father’s office, she cusses audibly as she remembers the hunting knife she keeps in her boot. 

It’s been a long fucking day. 

Jude hums along to a commercial as she walks back to the counter, pulling out her knife along the way and slicing the tape of the top box. With a whistle, she opens the box and frowns at finding a bunch of little cardboard boxes stuffed inside. What the hell did Madoc order?

Her whistling stops in horror as she picks up one of the packages and spins it around, only to find bold neon print plastered along the front:  _** XXX RECHARGEABLE NIPPLE CLAMPS ** _

“WHAT THE FUCK?” Jude screeches at the top of her lungs as she drops the box and jumps back. Why the hell does her father need some hundred-or-so sets of rechargeable nipple clamps? Why do nipple clamps even need to be charged in the first place?

Taking a moment to steel herself, Jude moves towards the second box—staying as far away from the nipple clamps as possible—and reads the label for an explanation. 

_ Ohhhh, these are for next door. The delivery man must’ve mixed up the addresses. _

Letting out a sigh of relief, she pushes the nipple clamps back into their box and closes the lid, checking the other labels and seeing that all four boxes are meant for next door and thanking her lucky stars that Madoc didn’t suddenly decide to get his kink on. 

Looking out across the driveway to the innocuous white building beside Lawn & Order, she rolls her eyes. The Sinful Serpent—complete with its shimmering golden apple sign—has been the bane of her father’s existence since it opened a year ago. Every day she has to hear about how he hates sharing space with some gross sex shop. While adult stores aren’t really Jude’s thing, she hasn’t cared too much because she hasn’t had to interact with the store or owner. 

_ Until _ , she supposes,  _ today _ . 

She stacks the boxes back up and picks them all up with a grunt, thankful for the workout routine that her work provides as she curses the delivery man for taking his hand truck with him. 

Only one car is in the parking lot of the sex shop and she celebrates the fact that nobody will see her going into the store. The last thing she needs is people recognizing her workplace on her shirt and bothering her or her dad. It’s already bad enough listening to old men ogle her when she goes to do landscaping work. 

The front door is hooked up to an electronic bell that sounds like the twinkle of magic. As she pushes her way into the Sinful Serpent, she lets out a sound of surprise. Whatever she expected a sex shop to look like, this certainly isn’t it. 

The entire store is decorated to look like a forest at twilight, with displays cut into bookshelves that look like giant trees and murals depicting faeries dancing through delicate nature landscapes wrapping around the walls. The lighting is low, except for where spotlights illuminate the wares. Over along one wall, by where the lingerie and exotic dancing costumes are, is a stage with a pole, the whole area bathed in blue light and covered in decor like coral. Between the entrance and exit door, the area for the registers resembles a castle. 

“Give me a moment,” a voice calls out from within the castle. “I’ve got to check your ID.”

Jude panics, the very suggestion that she might be a customer in a store like this sending her brain into red alert. “I’m not here to shop!”

“The hell you here for then? Last I checked we didn’t have a gloryhole.”

She all but screams, short circuiting at being faced with a worse option than shopping at a store like this. As she tries to think of what to say, a young man pops up from behind the counter and surveys her, his kohl-lined eyes narrowed as he tries to figure out what her deal is. 

He’s dressed in all black, his button up shirt undone halfway down his chest, exposing edges of tattoos that she doesn’t study enough to identify. His bottom lip and septum are pierced, as are his ears—which appear to have been elfed, because they end in sharp points. When he crosses his arms in front of his chest, his fingers are covered in glittering rings. 

And he’s grinning at her. 

“I uh, um,” she shakes her head, and then remembers the heavy boxes she’s hauled all the way over. “I work next door and, uh, the mailman,” she trails off again, her cheeks flaming as she lowers her voice and mutters, “I think he mixed up our addresses.”

His smile widens and his eyes look dangerous as he tilts his head. “And why would you think that?”

She glares at him and he chuckles lowly. 

“We didn’t order these.”

“Can you be sure?” He asks, raising one painted nail to tap thoughtfully against his chin. “A landscaping company and adult entertainment store must have some overlap. Ropes and chains come to mind.”

“We don’t need rechargeable nipple clamps!” 

“Everybody needs rechargeable nipple clamps,” he counters, his smirk replaced by reverent intensity. 

She lets out a frustrated noise and slams the boxes on the counter, her back cracking in protest. “I don’t!”

“Woah! Stow the seriosity, Sunshine,” he lifts his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just playing with you.”

Grinding her teeth and digging her nails into her palms, she does her very best to keep from choking him out as he leans across the counter, his falling shirt collar exposing a necklace with a snake pendant hanging at his sternum. 

She goes to spin on her heel and leave, but stops when a door—hidden behind a painting of a faun and nymph doing unspeakable things—opens, revealing a pretty young woman with blue hair pulled up into a messy bun. 

“Cardan I can’t find the damn nipple clamps. I thought they were supposed to be delivered today?”

“Don’t worry, Nic,” the young man calls back with a smile. “Sunshine here brought them over.”

Jude, bristling at the title, misses how the woman momentarily blanches when she lays eyes on her. Quickly recovering and putting on a stony face, she walks over to the castle counter and inspects the opened box. 

“You look familiar,” she observes and Jude zeroes in on her carefully cool tone. “Don’t you work at that coffee shop downtown? Bean There, Done That?”

“You’re thinking of my twin, Taryn.” Jude bites her tongue, doing her beat to avoid sounding annoyed at being confused with that backstabbing little—

“Sunshine here is our neighbor, Nicasia,” Cardan cheerfully announces. “She got our order and was kind enough to haul it over.”

“My name is Jude,” she grumbles. 

He ignores her, leaning in conspiratorially and stage whispering in Nicasia’s ear. “She has insisted that she doesn’t need rechargeable nipple clamps, so surely they must belong to us.”

“Everyone needs rechargeable nipple clamps,” Nicasia whispers back. 

“That’s what I said!”

Jude, rooted in place from the pure horror of listening to this conversation, watches as Cardan picks up a pair of scissors and opens a second box; pulling out a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs and grinning when he notices her watching him. Nicasia raises a perfectly groomed brow at the situation before grabbing the box of nipple clamps and heading to restock the shelves. 

Once again, he leans forward, fingers spinning the handcuffs around as he smirks at her. “Now that the packages are handled, what can I do you for?”

Jude frowns, sure that he misspoke. It’s then that her phone goes off and she celebrates any excuse to get the fuck out. 

_ Emergency situation at Dr. Wullworth’s. Need you to take over cutting at the Collethes. -Madoc _

“I’m good, I’ve got a lawn to trim,” she says, turning off her phone and tucking it back into her pocket. 

“Awe, Sunshine, you ain’t gotta clean up for me.”

She tilts her head in confusion before shrugging and turning to leave. 

“Gotta go out the other door, Sunshine,” he sighs, almost like he’s disappointed.  Weird. 

Jude still tries the door, but it won’t open from this side, so she grabs ahold of her pride and walks around the castle counter, moving as quickly as she can and keeping her head down to avoid getting any further education. 

“Bye,” she waves her hand awkwardly as she hits the exit door. 

“Bye, Sunshine.”


End file.
